


Confirming all who analyze

by middlemarch



Category: Mercy Street (TV)
Genre: American Civil War, Doctors & Physicians, F/M, Friendship/Love, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Letters, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-17
Updated: 2016-09-17
Packaged: 2018-08-15 12:24:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8056222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch
Summary: Jed understands something Mary tries to conceal.





	Confirming all who analyze

“You should drink it while it’s hot,” Jed said, setting the full cup and saucer down beside her with care. 

The steam rose the same way milk would have undulated and unfolded in his evening coffee. She hadn’t served any tonight and Dr. Hale had grumbled audibly but she had not felt she could bear to face the stairs again or carry a laden tray through the halls. Miss Hastings had been eager to begin a diatribe about “Some people who feel service to others is simply beneath them,” which ordinarily would only have amused Mary, but tonight she felt it acutely and had started to rise, despite what it cost her, when Captain McBurney interjected “I’m sure one night without coffee is an injury we can all tolerate without much fuss. Do sit down, Nurse Phinney. Nurse Hastings, would you join Dr. Hale and myself in rounding on the small ward?” He’d smiled kindly at Mary as he followed Dr. Hale and Nurse Hastings from the room and she’d made an effort to reciprocate but once they’d left, she’d allowed herself the full measure of her misery.

Jedediah had been absorbed with a French medical journal that had arrived for him in the post, a rare treat, and she thought he hardly knew she was in the room. She had her own book open upon her lap but it did not hold her interest and she let her gaze stray to the fire, soothed a little by its constant movement and the way it spilled light and shadow in equal measure from its shifting heart. She must not have noticed Jedediah leaving because she had barely been aware of his return until he stood beside her and spoke. She took the tea cup in her hand and sipped at it; it was very hot and he had found something to sweeten it though she could still make out the bitterness of the willow bark tincture he’d added. She let her hand curve around the cup and tried to curve herself around the pain that beset her, willing it to diminish, unsuccessful as she had been the whole day.

“Does it always come upon you so hard?” he asked, his voice gentle and even, but still she flushed and wished she sat closer to the fire, to blame it for the color in her face.

“I can’t think what you mean,” she tried, hoping her tone, the way she did not look at him but kept her eyes trained on the fire, the tiles gleaming around the hearth, would indicate he should leave off.

“Mary, I’m a physician trained and I’ve been married for twelve years. Your suffering is not foreign to me,” he replied, still matter-of-fact, without the least hint of the sarcasm he favored or even the more affectionate, vivacious wit she’d heard from him lately. 

“This isn’t… we should not speak of this, it’s not seemly,” she said haltingly, now peering down into the well of the tea-cup, still partly full of tea that looked black in shadow but would hold all the colors of autumn if the sun touched it or even a candle’s smaller light.

“‘It’s not seemly?’ Is anything ‘seemly’ here at Mansion House? Your clinic for the camp followers, riddled with pox the lot of them…when you assisted me in Private Stephens’s colectomy last week and I was up to my elbows in clotted blood and shit from his lacerations, was that seemly?” he said with some exasperation and she winced at the sound, the pang in her belly, the memory of the wounded boy, his abdomen a second deadly battlefield. Jed was watching her, sighed a little, began to speak again in a voice he saved for the times they were alone.

“Was it seemly when you cared for me? When I vomited and you wiped my face, emptied my slops, bathed me and helped me when I was everything revolting, when I pawed at you like a beast, wept in your lap like a child, and all of it my own damned fault? Mary?”

“I-- you were ill and I was, I am a nurse,” she said, as if that explained it all.

“And I am a doctor,” he said neatly.

“But I am not your patient. Not for this, in this way, I don’t know what I may be, but not that, surely,” she put back to him. She sipped the tea, cooler now, and tried to take a bigger swallow, to hope that the medicine would make some difference after all, the night promising to be long and agonized without its benefit, the day ahead another torturous slog.

“You are my friend…I care for you, Mary, for your pain, I wish there was more I could do, that I was permitted, but I think there’s only a little you will allow,” he said quietly, serious and completely earnest. She drank down the last of the tea and placed the cup back in its waiting saucer. She turned to face him and saw his regard was intent and sympathetic, concerned and frustrated but not with her. 

“It’s not always this bad, but sometimes, often it is. My mother was the same but not my sister, Caroline is lucky that way, it has all been easy for her,” she said, paused but he only waited and did not interrupt or ask her anything. “I was told, if I should bear a child, it might become more manageable, but my marriage was barren and then… Gustav died. At home, I would rest a little more…sometimes something warm helped, but I never found anything that made much difference, only time.” She held his gaze with hers and let the blush on her face recede, tightened her mouth against the cramp that wracked her.

“I’m sorry, Mary,” he said, which she didn’t expect.

“Why? Why should you be?” she asked.

“Because you are hurt and no one has ever been able to help, not enough. And if Anne Hastings had not distracted me from my article with her God-awful screech, I might not, I shouldn’t have paid any attention, wouldn’t have seen you wincing. Even though you feel it should be beneath my notice, I don’t, I can’t agree. At least, will you let me help a little, will you go to bed now and not worry about anyone else for a few hours?” he said and his tone was not kind, nor gentle, she knew well what it was but she would not name it, could not bear another ache tonight.

“Yes, I will. Jedediah,” she replied, exhaled slowly as she stood and he was there beside her, one hand on her forearm, the other around her waist, sure and steady, the warmth of his palm a relief, even through the stiff layer of her stays.

“You’re too pale, do you feel faint?” he asked quickly, ready, she saw, to do something impetuous, determined only to see her upstairs and not concerned about the implications of how she got there.

“No, I’m all right, you needn’t worry,” she replied as firmly as she could manage.

“‘Needs must when the devil drives,’ you always say that, Mary. Shall I walk you to your room, then?” he said, letting a bit of amusement into his low voice.

“I suppose you may,” she said and could not be certain if it was the medicine, the warmth of the tea or the relief of his arm around her, but she felt a little better. The prospect of her bed seemed less cold and empty and more quiet refuge, perhaps even a good sleep awaited her, dreamless and restorative. They walked slowly and she was grateful that though the hour was not yet very late, the halls were not crowded; no one seemed to pay any attention to them. At her door, he let his hands fall away from her and she swallowed back the sigh to feel the lack of him. 

“Good night, Jedediah. And thank you for the tea, I think it’s helping,” she said, trying not to feel shy or immodest, wishing there were another context for their conversation that could render it natural, unremarkable, but that was not within their grasp even if they might both admit to the fantasy.

“Good. I have something else in mind, but I will send it round with one of the nuns, I don’t want you worrying about any gossip, though the abominable Hastings seems to be well-occupied for the time being. Finally, McBurney has dealt with her—it seems we may actually have a chief medical officer worthy of the title, no?”

He smiled, wry and disarming, and she opened the door, stepped over the threshold, out of his reach. He just stood in front of her, then shook his head a little as if clearing a thought, a memory, a desire from his mind.

“Good night, Mary, and sleep well.”

He walked away then and she turned to her bed, began the lengthy series of unfastenings that would lead finally to her hair in one loose plait, a plain nightgown billowing as she pulled it over her head. She drew her shawl over her shoulders at the knock at the door, too soft to be Jedediah’s, not urgent enough to be someone needing the Head Nurse. She opened the door and found Sister Mary Theresa with her arms full. She was one of the younger nuns, most often found with Sister Isabella, not as giddy though lively enough when it was appropriate.

“I’ve come with a few things, Nurse Mary, but you ought to be in bed already. Dr. Foster said you wouldn’t be, would be waiting but that I should tell you quite firmly to lie down and rest. So I shall!” she said. She had the air of a schoolmistress or an eldest sister and Mary found she minded it not at all and climbed into the bed. Sister Mary Theresa came right over and tucked something bulky and quite warm right next to Mary.

“We don’t have a proper bed warmer in this place, but Dr. Foster and I managed this—it’s a hot brick in a towel and you’re to keep it by you. I’ll bring you another in the morning and Dr. Foster said, no, really he ordered that you stay in bed until I do, ma’am. I shouldn’t like to cross him. I’m to bring you some tea and breakfast and he said he will refuse to let you join his rounds if you come down before 9 o’clock,” the nun explained.

“He did, did he?” Mary asked, trying to be put out but mostly touched by Jedediah’s consideration and how keen Sister Mary Theresa was to deliver his message.

“Yes. He said something about escorting you right back to your room if you peeped your head out too early, but he couldn’t mean that truly, could he? He’s ever one for a little exaggeration. Mother Mary Veronica always says so when we remember him in our prayers…I nearly forgot, he said to give you this and to tell you to go right to sleep. It seems good advice to me, begging your pardon, Nurse Mary. I’ll go now, but mind you try to rest and stay warm.”

Mary waited until Sister Mary Theresa had left, to hear the little _swish_ of her habit across the oak floorboards, before she opened the hastily sealed envelope; the signet mark was off-center but the wax was hardened. She touched the ridges of the design lightly.

> Baroness,  
>  I am struggling for the correct degree of formality; we haven’t needed to correspond and I find I’m unsure how to address you. But I feel compelled to reiterate what Sister Mary Theresa promised me she would convey, that you must remain abed tomorrow morning until you have had breakfast and more tea. And if necessary, I’ll order you to your account books and the library and ask Mr. Diggs to assist me until you are recovered. Perhaps we may divine a way to ease your travails in the weeks and months to follow. I’m sorry I have so little to send with this letter but confident you will think even that more than you deserve. It is not. And I must correct myself as I misspoke earlier—you are my dear friend, the most dear, ~~my~~ and I wish that between us, there would never be a question of what was seemly but only what is needed and what is wanted. Forgive me for how ill-written this is, how clumsy and constrained; I haven’t your skill and grace when it comes to expressing myself aptly, to say all that is meant with only a few words, the best words, but know that I wish to, to find them to say, to write, to trace in the palm of your hand.  
>  Your servant,  
>  JTF

Mary folded the letter into the creases Jedediah had made for it and held it as she imagined he might have. It was more than she had expected but she had wanted it without knowing. To have something of him to return to when she was entitled to nothing was a gift as much as the tea or the swaddled brick by her belly. She hadn’t told him everything earlier; she hadn’t said how she had been soothed by Gustav’s calloused hands laid warm against her, his body curled around hers, shifting to match her through the night as she moved restlessly against the pain. Or how she had not minded the bloody claw within her after Gustav died, a punishment she felt she had deserved, a pain she could contain unlike the grief that swamped her, that took away all the edges of being Mary. She could not tell Jedediah how she had envisioned his own hands, those quick, sensitive surgeon’s hands pressed against her, his chest against her back, the fierce grip within her gentled by him and his awareness, his undisguised affection and acknowledgement of her body’s female laboring voiced without embarrassment as he crooned in her ear, “my poor darling girl, I know, just breathe, it will pass, Mary, it will.”

She was dozing, nearly asleep with the letter still tight in her hand. She leaned over to lay it down on the small table beside the bed, at the foot of the silver framed daguerreotype of Gustav. Mary didn’t believe he would grudge her the comfort the letter brought as he wouldn’t have been bothered by the willow bark and honey in the tea. He would be happy to watch her falling asleep without her lips bitten against the pain. She moved back to the spot where the bed was warm, liking the solid weight of the wrapped brick in lieu of what she couldn’t have. She knew she must be dreaming but she didn’t dare turn when she felt a hand stroking her hair, her cheek, a wordless presence beside her she would not risk dissipating with a question or even a recognition of what it could mean if she were wrong; she would make it be a dream and then she could do as Jedediah said and not worry, only enjoy what would be more improper than anything else the night had witnessed, ephemeral as the steam rising from the tea-cup and as real.

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, this is literally "period drama" and I know that I may be straining the bounds of credulity but it's my party, etc etc. I think a lot of us wonder what it was like, physically, to be a woman in the past and I know plenty of women who struggle with painful periods now, so I can only imagine (which I did) what it could be like in 1862. Jed is not going to have much to offer other than acknowledgement, but I can imagine Belinda might have some herbal tonics or even Matron Brannan. I thought this story offered an unusual way to address Jed and Mary's unusual relationship and I wanted them to talk and not-talk both about her menstrual issues and their love affair. The ending and Jed's family crest on the seal are both open to interpretation. The title is from Emily Dickinson.


End file.
